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Tidal Recorded $28 Million in Losses in 2015

Jay Z may be among Forbes’ Hip-Hop Cash Kings, but he reportedly lost a ton of money with his music streaming service Tidal.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Aspiro, the parent company of Tidal, had a loss of $28 million in 2015, which is almost triple the loss recorded in 2014 ($10 million).

However, Tidal’s revenue rose to $47 million in 2015 compared to $36 million in 2014. A Source told the WSJ that this financial statement doesn’t reflect all of Tidal’s U.S. revenue and financing.

The company’s spending went mostly towards record label royalty fees, which reportedly cost $35 million of the budget. The rest of the monies – $25 million to be exact – went to sustaining their workforce of 86 employees.

It certainly has been an uphill struggle to remain profitable in the current streaming wars battle. Tidal had to fight competition from a variety of music steaming companies including Spotify, Apple Music and even YouTube.

Nevertheless, Tidal had some major wins this year with the released of exclusive albums from Beyonce, Kanye West and Rihanna who are also investors in the company. The service has 4.2 million subscribers but that’s still far behind their competitors Spotify and Apple Music’s total subscription bases of 30 million and 17 million, respectively.

In the past months, artists such as Kanye West, Kid Cudi and Metro Boomin have demanded that Tidal, Apple Music and Spotify end the streaming war and let fans have the music without restrictions.

Reps for Jay Z, Aspiro and Tidal had no comment on the matter. [ Trent Fitzgerald ]